


2258.42

by OceanTiger23



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Battle of Vulcan, Gen, Minor Character-Centric, couple of OCs as well, rated for language and dark content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-11 06:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTiger23/pseuds/OceanTiger23
Summary: Where were you on 2/11/2258? A story about the Battle of Vulcan as seen through the eyes of seven ordinary people, each connected in some way, shape or form to one of the seven members of the bridge crew.





	1. Ben

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am a deep disappointment to my Ferengi friends.
> 
> Repost from FF.net, 11/15/2016 - 12/18/2016.

_New Sacramento High School, Federation Mars Colony_

The presentation slide reads "test procedure," and is followed by four brief bullet points of instruction. At the head of the classroom, Benjamin Song is beginning to think he shouldn't have left the header in red; a good third of the class is looking seriously alarmed. On the right side of the room near the window, seventeen-year-old Matilda Tourkow seems ready to bolt. Time to diffuse the situation.

"If you've studied your notes from this month's unit there's no need to worry," Ben says, with a conciliatory smile. "I have faith; you guys are gonna be fine."

Normally he doesn't have to fake a good mood. He's always loved teaching, this year more than ever since making the switch from ninth grade social studies to junior year Earth history. The kids are quick, and he does his best to make the material interesting. But Hikaru's subspace message from two hours ago—hastily written—sits uneasily at the back of his mind:

_May not make it out Sat.—cadet class ordered to help w/problem on Vulcan. Prob sounds worse than is, will text when I know more. Don't worry. Love you. -H_

It came in at the start of first period, just as Ben was putting his phone in his bag. He never looks at his phone while he's in class—a personal policy as much as a way to teach by example. He doesn't need to be any more distracted from the lesson than his students do. And as much as he wants to text back, to press for clarification or even to check the news, he knows Hikaru is probably out of reach by now, hurtling through the Alpha Quadrant at maximum warp.

Lunch—he can answer at lunch, in another hour and a half. At least then Hikaru will have a response waiting for him the next time he sees his inbox.

Ben queues up the essay prompts on his school-issued datapad as his students clear their desks of belongings and tap into their still-gleaming desk consoles. He has mixed feelings about the new technology. On one hand, it makes plagiarism damn near impossible without an external device, the consoles locking down everything but the test files and blank scratch paper. On the other, plagiarism only happens when students think they _can_ get away with it. Before the consoles were installed over the summer, students took their exams on their school datapads, then turned them in via plagiarism software, simply having to resist temptation. Ben isn't quite sure how the anti-cheating principles he's attempting to instill in them will hold up two years from now, when they're writing university papers from the comfort and privacy of their own dorm rooms.

"Good luck," he says as he releases the prompts, and a copy of test file pops up on every desk console screen. And, even though it's a bit of a moot point: "Remember your honor code pledge."

He darts a glance at Matilda Tourkow as he says this, briefly catching her eye. Back in October, after she turned in a shoddy and obviously half-copied essay on the history of terraforming, Ben sat her down in his office to ask if she had anything to say for herself. She didn't offer up a sob story, though Ben has a strong feeling she could if she wanted to. He's heard through the grapevine that she's a year behind the other kids due to mental health difficulties in her freshman year. That and her near-terror at his intention to notify her parents makes him think she has high expectations riding on her at home. One of his colleagues mentioned a high-achieving older sibling in the mix somewhere. Doing what, Ben can't remember.

He sits at the table in the front corner of the room, sorting through the exam essays from first period. He'll have a small mountain of grading by the end of the day. Earlier that week, he made a commitment to bust his ass getting through it by Friday evening, so he could have the rest of the weekend to spend with Hikaru. Now, of course, it's not so clear that'll be happening, but Ben can't help but hold out hope. He starts reading through the first of the first period essays.

_Arguable thesis statement, check._

_Topic sentences, check._

_Decent supporting evidence…check._

Ten minutes tick by, then twenty, then thirty…

A sudden knock makes Ben—and the entire class—look up. Through the glass window set into the top half of the classroom door he can see Jaime, one of his colleagues, motioning urgently at him.

Ben's eyes sweep over to the classroom. The kids are staring at him now.

He stands, his chair scraping on the floor. "I'll be right back," he assures them as he steps out into the hall.

The door slides shut behind him with a pneumatic hiss.

Jaime is older than he is: a short, heavyset woman with graying reddish curls and adult children, and close to thirty years of teaching under her belt. Since his arrival at NSHS last year, they've become fast friends, though it's been clear from the beginning that Jaime is a gifted mentor. Friendly, optimistic, unflappable. But upon seeing her in the hall, Ben's stomach does a backflip. She looks stricken, half in tears. Ben has never seen her like this.

Jaime takes him by the arm and pulls him a few meters down the hall, out of his students' sight.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"It's Vulcan," Jaime says, sotto voce. "It's gone."

Ben stares at her, unsure he's heard her right. " _What?_ "

"The planet, it's just—gone. There was some kind of attack. It's all over the news." She slips her phone out of her pocket and shows him the news feed on her phone, the headlines, the video looping over and over of Vulcan collapsing in on itself, so fast and efficient it almost looks fake.

It's as if he's been plunged into ice. "What about the fleet?" he hears himself ask, his voice sounding far away. He feels lightheaded. Jaime is shaking her head in disbelief.

"They lost six ships, all cadets. Seven went out, only one came back. There was apparently a massive battle. It's awful."

Ben forces himself to take a deep breath. "Which ship?" he asks. Some rational part of him knows he'll need this information later—even if it does nothing for him now.

Jaime glances up at him. "Sorry?"

"The ship that made it out, what was the name of it?"

A look of horrified realization dawns on Jaime's face. "Oh god, Ben." She scrolls down her news feed again, muttering to herself, " _Hood, Antares, Farragut, Truman,_ no, no—ah! The _Enterprise_. That's the one. _"_ She looks back at him, now with a mother's concern. "Was he definitely deployed? Do you know for sure…?"

Ben's throat is so tight he doesn't trust himself to speak. He nods instead.

Jaime pulls him into a tight hug. When she speaks next, there's conviction behind her words: "Don't assume the worst."

Ben can't assume the worst. He can barely begin to fathom it.

"What are we gonna tell the kids?" he asks, when he gets his voice back.

Jaime pulls back, now with a grimace. "If they don't know already, they'll know by the end of class. I think we owe them the truth."

Ben nods again. "Right."

Jaime reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes—full of concern and care—are almost too painful to meet. "I'm right down the hall if you need anything."

She hugs him again, and they walk away in opposite directions, back to their respective classrooms. In the four meters between him and the door, Ben resolves to let the kids finish their essays before he says anything. He'll end class five minutes early, give everyone a couple of bonus points to make up for the lost time. Figure out what the hell to say to them. Part of him is sickened by this plan. It seems cruel, cowardly, to sit on this information while the kids scribble frantically about the social effects of the Romulan Wars. But somewhere underneath his racing, fevered worry there's the unshakable notion that things have now been irreparably changed, that this day is going to be the division between a _before_ and an _after_.

Let them have some semblance of normalcy, at least for the next forty minutes.

The classroom door slides open again and there are thirty sets of eyes on him again. He gives them all another brief, utterly false smile— _don't worry; finish your test_ —and starts making his way over to his desk. Heads start to drop back down to their consoles, the kids' attention turning back to their essays.

Halfway across the room, his eyes fall on Matilda.

She's the only student in the room whose attention is not on her desk console. She's frozen in place, her phone clutched in her hand beneath the desk, halfway to her backpack. She isn't bothering to hide it. She's staring at him, her eyes wide and horrified and full of tears.

All at once, Ben remembers in sharp detail what his colleague told him about Matilda back in October. There _is_ a high-achieving sibling: an up-and-coming Starfleet communications officer, stationed on the USS _Farragut_.


	2. Jocelyn

_Summerhill, Atlanta, Georgia_

That's the nice thing about "working from home," Jocelyn Darnell reflects, when she finally drags herself out of bed at two-thirty in the afternoon. There's no real set start time.

Now if only she didn't feel so damn miserable.

She shuffles into the kitchen in search of decongestant. This morning, when she rose early (as always, every Monday-Wednesday-Friday) to drop Joanna off at daycare, she didn't bother to change out of her pajamas, knowing full well she would soon be right back where she started: in bed, warding off whatever the hell has her laid up and sick as a dog.

That's the other thing about working from home—you only do it when you're afraid of infecting everybody in the office. Double-edged sword, really.

A yawn makes her still-sore throat tingle painfully. She starts up the coffee maker. Tea would probably be better, but she's still exhausted and she needs to get _something_ done before the nanny brings Joanna home at five. She stands at the counter for a moment in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, enjoying the warm patch of sunshine coming in through the window above the sink. For the last four days straight, it was nothing but cold, drizzly winter rain.

Before she can make her way to the cabinet and locate a mug, the communicator console on the wall buzzes, and Jocelyn notices for the first time that she has four missed calls. For a moment she's worried it's her boss—she _really_ needs to answer those messages about next month's meeting with the Andorian clients—but then she sees the Boston area code: Ananya.

Ananya, her best friend from prep school in Houston, whose gossipy streak is delightful and a mile long. Ananya who kept in touch long after she moved away to attend some tiny, liberal-arts women's college and Jocelyn shuffled off to study economics at Ole Miss. Ananya who got Jocelyn through her divorce with a strategy that was fifty-percent being a sympathetic ear, twenty-percent sending care packages of chocolate and booze, and thirty-percent coming up with her own spectacular rants about _your ex-husband, commanding officer of the USS_ Asshole _since 2254._

Jocelyn hesitates in front of the comm console. Ananya has been all over the upcoming midterm elections, and Jocelyn really doesn't have the energy to listen to another rant about excessive defense spending and the Laurentian System.

Four missed calls, though. That's a lot even for her. Either Kevin's decided to make an honest woman out of her, or somebody's died.

Jocelyn picks up, audio only. "Hey, Nan."

Ananya, without preamble: "Have you seen the news?"

Jocelyn can feel the beginnings of a headache behind her eyes. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "No. Why?"

"Get online now."

Jocelyn pauses, because there's real alarm in Ananya's voice now. She can imagine her friend's dark eyes wide, her brow creased with worry.

"Hang on." She pads into the office and returns with her tablet.

"Are you online?"

" _Two seconds_." In short order the tablet is powered up and connected to the network, and Jocelyn pulls up her news feed—a tailored mishmash of local alerts and planetary broadcasts. At the top of the feed is a San Francisco Chronicle article, mirrored as "trending" in the right margin above the ads.

_Developing Story: Massive Seismic Activity Detected on Vulcan; Planetwide Evacuation Possible_

She scans further in the newsfeed and finds a Starfleet press release from an hour earlier stating that several ships have been deployed to handle whatever shadowy crisis is unfolding in Vulcan space. There are seven of them in total, listed in alphabetical order: the _Antares, Endeavor, Enterprise, Farragut, Hood, Truman, and Wolcott_.

"Crazy, right?" Ananya asks.

"Yeah," Jocelyn agrees. "Crazy."

Half an hour later the Chronicle article updates, and Jocelyn has to read the headline twice.

_Vulcan Destroyed in Planetwide Attack_

There's a video floating around online, looping over and over. It's fuzzy and off-kilter, captured from afar by the telescopic camera at a Starfleet outpost on a neighboring planet, Delta Vega. In the space of about six seconds, Vulcan crumbles in on itself and vanishes, so fast and efficient it almost looks fake. A number of armchair skeptics are wondering just that online, although there are just as many posts talking about Vulcan friends and colleagues on Earth somehow all reacting at the moment of the planet's destruction. Something about mental bonds between family and loved ones being broken. Jocelyn doesn't know what to make of that—she doesn't know any Vulcans, and the whole touch-telepath thing is confusing at best.

There's a viral tag in Standard: #IGrieveWithThee, and a corresponding one in Vulcan. More than Vulcan speaker—nearly all humans, as far as Jocelyn can tell—has been quick to point out the Vulcan one has a critical grammar error, so everyone should use the Standard one instead.

And there's another Starfleet press release: of the seven ships deployed to Vulcan, six have been destroyed in a massive battle, ambushed by a Romulan ship that apparently claims no allegiance to the Empire, and has now vanished from Vulcan space. The news outlets are going haywire: where did it come from? Is it heading to Earth? Are they next?

Jocelyn skims through the list of lost ships twice before doubling back and catching the phrase _cadet-crewed_. She minimizes the newsfeed.

Without Joanna bouncing off the walls, the house is quiet, barely touched by ambient noise: the central heating, winter birds chirping outside, the occasional distant hum of a hovercar on the road.

_Cadet-crewed._

She tabs open the contacts folder on her tablet without thinking, then frowns and closes it. She still has Leonard's contact information, of course, but he won't be reachable on a civilian comm.

If he's reachable at all.

She tabs open the contacts folder again—and hesitates. Maybe it's because the news is still too surreal, because it hasn't sunk in yet that an _entire planet_ and all its inhabitants are now gone forever, a hole in the map on the other side of the quadrant. Maybe it's because—she's woman enough to admit it—it's still awkward between them.

If Leonard is alive and well, if by some insane chance he's on the one ship that made it out, then she's the last person he'll want to talk to about it.

She stares at the tablet screen.

Once upon a time, she would have believed she could make a clean break from any relationship. She hasn't been dumped since the tenth grade, and that's a streak she hasn't broken since—not even with him. (He can call it "mutual" all he wants; _she's_ the one who decided to bite the bullet and get on the phone with a lawyer.) But she's not twenty anymore, and things stick now more than they used to. Joanna—light of her life, best part of her world and then some—is, of course, the reason why. Jocelyn has come to terms with that. Being a divorced parent is simply part of her reality.

Leonard is a damn grown-up, and she isn't responsible for him. He can take care of himself. It doesn't change the fact that he'd be leaving people behind.

Looking back down at her contact files, Jocelyn swipes down on the screen of her tablet, scrolling up from the L's to the E's. The name is right there, nestled between her cousin in Paris and one of her work colleagues: Eleanor McCoy. Jocelyn opens the contact file and hits _call_.

She's always liked Leonard's mother, and she's pretty sure Leonard's mother has always liked her. If she has any lingering regrets about the divorce, it's how little they've been in touch, how little time Eleanor has spent with Joanna. Whatever comes of today, Jocelyn thinks, maybe it's time Jojo starts getting to know her grandma better.

If there's anything to be known beyond what Jocelyn can glean from the 24-hour news cycle, Eleanor probably knows it already. If not, well, that makes two of them.


	3. Janice

_USS_ Tereshkova _, Laurentian System_

During her sophomore year at the Academy, Janice Rand returned home for winter break and fought with her best friend from high school. Friends, actually. The exchange was primarily with Thomas, but the others ganged up on her as the debate grew more and more heated.

It started when she shared with them her tentative post-Academy plans—something all Starfleet cadets were required to declare by the end of their third semester—to seek a post on a starship most likely bound for the Laurentian System. The draw was not the ship's destination, but the availability of logistics assignments, the potential for hands-on operations training—but it didn't matter. The backlash was swift and immediate. Her entry into Starfleet had been tolerable, they said, but this was another matter.

These were the same friends who joked, all through senior year of high school, that her future plans should include destroying the military-industrial complex from within. _Starfleet isn't a military organization_ , she reminded them on multiple occasions. It was harder for them to understand, she knew. Starfleet was in her blood, not theirs.

_Sure,_ they replied every time, _and the Laurentian System isn't a war zone_.

The Laurentian conflict revolves around a loose confederation of small, class-D planets in that system, inhabited by a warp-capable humanoid species. The planets are historically and economically interdependent, but otherwise wildly distinct in nearly all aspects: culture, ethnicity, language, currency, and governance. Despite that each planet's commitment to adhere to the Federation Charter varies wildly, fifteen years ago they lobbied collectively for Federation membership. The first diplomats dispatched to the system attempted to approach certain of the planets for entry, unwittingly reigniting centuries-old hatreds and rivalries. Starfleet got involved when it became clear that the mess wasn't going to clean itself up.

This is where Janice finds herself, on the far side of the quadrant, an assistant to the ship's historian aboard the USS _Tereshkova_. She is not a soldier, and Starfleet is not a military organization—though some days it's hard to convince herself of that.

The chilly records room on Deck 14 is her usual haunt. She spends the bulk of beta and gamma shift in front of a glowing console screen, her fingers cold and her eyes fatigued, processing not only the ship's logs and manifest records, but accounts of the _Tereshkova_ 's efforts in the system. The vast majority of these accounts detail tedious, ineffectual negotiations with local leadership. These Janice accepts as part of the continual daily grind. The others tell of explosive, violent away missions: infrequent reports delivered in dry language that belie their significance. These are sharp reminders that they are sitting on a powder keg, and they leave Janice sleepless and antsy.

In three weeks, the _Tereshkova_ will be due for a resupply stop at the Tyson Starbase, and Janice's stint as a logistics trainee will be over. From there she'll make her way back to San Francisco and apply for reassignment on Earth or on a starbase: somewhere she can feel grounded again, and not like she's caught in something out of her control, draining her energies when she could be of more use elsewhere—in a laboratory, for instance, doing systems analyses and simulations to optimize the running of a starship.

She remembers Thomas's smug assertions about Starfleet's incompetent meddling, his barely-concealed contempt for her plans and goals, his casual absolutism about Federation policy and offworld relations. She wonders what she would say to him now.

Of course, that's an unlikely scenario. After the argument, Janice stopped trying to keep in touch with him, as well as her other high school friends. It was obvious they were now different people—or she was a different person. Or maybe she had always been different, and it had just taken Starfleet to bring it out.

It no longer mattered. Janice had left that version of herself behind and made other friends at the Academy—friends who were simultaneously like-minded and vastly different: John McKenna, Catie Morris, Isabel Rao. Then later, Gaila El-Haazir and Nyota Uhura.

But in the last eight months she's barely been in touch with any of them. John—already a junior when Janice started at the Academy—spent his first two years as a graduate training on the USS _Antares_ , then got lucky and secured a coveted spot as a helm on the newly commissioned USS _Enterprise_. He's had his nose to the grindstone ever since, preparing for the shakedown cruise. Catie, Janice knows, has an Earth posting in Sydney studying weapons systems, but she's unsure about Isabel, who was initially assigned to a base on some far-flung Andorian moon, and now could be anywhere.

Gaila and Nyota, of course, are still at the Academy. Janice tries to recall the last time she heard from either of them. She and Gaila talked briefly in November—at the time, Gaila was seeing some guy with a nose for trouble and a screwball idea that he was going to be the first person to beat the Kobayashi Maru—but have they spoken since? Janice isn't sure.

And when was the last time she heard from Nyota?

A familiar twinge in her stomach tells her that's a rabbit hole she doesn't need to revisit.

Too late, though. A memory flashes through her mind. She's sitting in the basement of one of the junior dorms, a cup of hot cider in her hand. It's the chorus's secret recipe, referred to for decades now only as the "wassail" and served once a year in early December, when the chorus's student leaders spring a pre-finals party on the unsuspecting freshmen. There are two huge metal liquor tanks of the stuff, industrial brewing equipment pilfered from some biochemistry cadet's illicit craft beer project. One is labeled "wassail," the other " _fun_ wassail."

Janice is a few cups into the "fun" wassail, although she isn't having much fun. Gaila is sprawled across a chair to her right, no soberer but her mood miles better. Nyota is absent from the festivities, holed up with some xenolinguistics project in the long-range sensor lab.

"Yeah," Gaila says, "I'm pretty sure she's got something going on."

With whom, Gaila isn't sure. In the past, she's half-jokingly speculated that Nyota is seeing one of her xenolinguistics professors, though to Janice that seems unlikely. Of the three of them, Gaila is the hell-raiser.

Gaila pats her shoulder, full of assurances and facts that Janice can't change. "If it makes you feel any better, even if she's not involved, she's definitely straight."

It doesn't make her feel better.

In the _Tereshkova_ records room, Janice turns back to her work. Time and distance have made it easier to shut down that particular line of thought.

At the wassail party, Gaila's words were cold comfort. What _did_ make her feel better was the notion that senior year was supposed to be hard anyways. How could it not be? She was in flux like everyone else, her time sucked away by exit exams, endless applications and meetings with faculty advisors, and time spent sitting behind a console in the simulation lab, watching friend after friend in the command track fail the Kobayashi Maru. ( _There's no beating it_ , John had told her in her first year, _no one ever has. That's the whole point._ ) There was nothing to do but grit her teeth and ride it out—like now.

Three weeks, Janice reminds herself. Then she can start over.

She stands up, rubbing her cold hands and stretching briefly before reassuming her seat at the archives console. She's still hours away from the end of gamma shift, but she can ride that out too. That's as far ahead as she lets herself think these days. Get through the shift, one day at a time. It's all more or less the same, anyways.

Twelve hours from now, the _Tereshkova_ , like every other Starfleet vessel in the Laurentian System, will receive word of a massive seismic disturbance on Vulcan. They will be notified of Command's decision to mobilize the Academy cadets to assist with a potential evacuation. John McKenna will be laid up at Starfleet General Hospital with a bad case of lungworm. Nyota Uhura and Gaila El-Haazir will find themselves one moment sitting through Jim Kirk's honor code hearing, and the next reporting to Hangar One to receive duty assignments.

Twelve hours and thirty-three minutes from now, all communication with the cadet-crewed ships will go dark. Operations personnel aboard the _Tereshkova_ will scramble to determine whether the problem is on their end or elsewhere, to find that all of their equipment is in perfect working order.

Thirteen hours and fourteen minutes from now, communication channels will reopen with a message from Acting Captain Spock of the USS _Enterprise_. By that point, Janice will no longer be mentally recording the time. It will stand out in her memory simply as _too late_.

In a month, when she is cut loose from the _Tereshkova_ and waiting for reassignment in San Francisco, she will find Nyota in a half-empty dorm room containing all of Nyota's tidiness and order and none of Gaila's sprawling mess. Janice will pull her friend into a long hug, and Nyota will lead her by the arm to their off-campus café of choice—the one John and Catie discovered, then handed off to them when they left the Academy. They will have ordered tea and sat down at a tiny corner table when the thought will cross Janice's mind.

_Say something, say something._

But what? As the server brings them their tea, Janice will think of John and Catie and Isabel. She'll think of Thomas and her dogmatic high school friends. She'll think of Gaila. She'll run through her mental list of the people she's lost over the years, to time and change and distance, and now death.

Then Nyota's dark eyes will suddenly brim with tears that threaten to spill over. "I asked to be reassigned," she will confess. "That day. I was assigned to the _Farragut_ with her, and I wanted to be on the _Enterprise_."

In that moment, Janice will realize there isn't enough room at their small table for the three of them—because yes, Gaila is there even though they can't see her, her absence filling their small corner of the café just as it did the empty dorm room. How selfish it would be for Janice to prioritize her feelings when only weeks ago Nyota was halfway across the quadrant, watching her friends and classmates die in Vulcan space.

Instead she will place a hand on Nyota's wrist and hold her gaze. "It isn't your fault," she will say, fighting to keep her voice steady.

Maybe someday, when all of this is far behind them, she will say something. When the thought no longer makes her feel stupid and childish, when it no longer feels dismissive to call it a crush.

_Remember when we were cadets? Remember the chorus? Remember the café?_

That day is a long way off.


	4. Arkady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wild OC appears!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be advised, this chapter contains some pretty explicit and disturbing violence/medical squick, so proceed with caution. More detailed info (and spoilers) in the endnotes.

_Nevsky District, St. Petersburg, Russia_

It's long dark when Arkady Leonidivich Chekov wakes, stiff and confused, in an unfamiliar room. He's slumped over in an armchair, an old-fashioned paper book—even older than he is—splayed out across his chest. He doesn't recognize the title, and he doesn't remember picking it up.

Then he notes the tall, ornate wooden bookshelf in the corner, and remembers: he is in the house of his son and daughter-in-law. The bookshelf was a wedding gift to Andrei and Sofiya from Arkady's sister, Annika. And there is the brown ottoman next to couch—the one where Pavel broke his elbow on his seventh birthday, trying to make a flying leap over the coffee table.

He reminds himself consciously of these facts, murmuring aloud to himself:

_It was a dream. You are not there. You are here._

He cannot, as with other dreams, tell himself it is not real.

The dream is a memory, as vivid as the day it took place fifty-five years ago, except that now he experiences it in the third person, floating above his body, almost as if watching a holovid. It no longer makes him break out in a cold sweat, but he needs to tell himself nonetheless:

_You are not there. You are here._

It began the way it always has: at the beginning of his day, just after dawn.

* * *

_He rises from the hard bed he has become accustomed to over the last four years and stands before the mirror in the bathroom. His body is all hard angles and flat planes: not the natural youth of a teenager-turned-twenty-something, but that of a man nearing the end of his prime, hard-earned, constantly maintained. His eyebrows are unrecognizable: dark, neat, and surgically upswept. He opens the locked drawer on the right side of the vanity and removes the hypospray that makes his blood run green, raises his body temperature, and quickens his metabolism._

_For all intents and purposes, he is Romulan._

_He follows his morning routine to a t—a light breakfast, a sonic shower, a few minutes to dress himself in uniform—then leaves the apartment with a small case. It's made from a distinctive dark wood from the forests which cover an eighth of the planet's landmass: elaborately carved, and thus prohibitively expensive. He does not remain to sweep the apartment, to check for any remaining evidence. He has already done that, and sent his last encrypted transmission to his point of contact._

_He makes the long walk to the central administrative building at the heart of the Krocton Segment. The dream does not skip forward in time as he walks past street vendors, uniformed schoolchildren, shrinking Reman. He experiences every step, every fearful sidelong glance._

_He thinks, not for the first time, that they need not fear him when he looks like this, like a dutiful centurion. They need fear him when he looks like them. When he looks like anyone—a street vendor, a gambler, a teacher—he is at his most dangerous. For all intents and purposes, he is_ Tal Shiar _._

_As he walks, he memorizes every sight, every sound, every smell. This will be the last time he sees this neighborhood. Something bittersweet and ironic lodges in his gut, mixed with familiar unease. It's true what they say about the Romulan Capitol. It's temperate and beautiful year-round: the City of Eternal Spring._

_When he passes successfully through security and arrives at the conference room, Rhian Xereth is there to greet him. "Right on time," she says, a vague smile playing about her mouth. She too is in uniform, identical to his. There are details about her that jump out to him, things he has gotten used to over the last four years as her partner agent. The glint of her eyes—hazel, unusual for most Romulans—and the patterns of her hair: dark and curly and buzzed down to the scalp. The quirk of her lips. Her impeccable posture._

_She leads him inside. "Citizens, I present to you Centurion Dhiemm R'Mor."_

_The room is unremarkable, but the six other people occupying it are anything but. Arkady knows who they are before Rhian's hand even touches the door._

_At the left, hands clasped behind her back, is General Isha Movan, head of the_ Tal Shiar _, and a gifted computer scientist: designer of the original data mining program that revolutionized the work of pinpointing dissenters of the Empire. Beside her is Senator Chavek Gaius, owner of half the brothels in the city, and the funder of a series of brutal, anonymous attacks on Tellarite freighters whose trade routes skirt the edge of the Neutral Zone. A connoisseur of Romulan ale as well. He has spoken with Arkady on the subject at length._

_At the right is Commander Galan Pardek of the Imperial Fleet, recently decorated for his role in suppressing a short-lived Reman rebellion on Calder II. According to Rhian, an excellent three-dimensional chess player, but an unpleasant son of a bitch. He is in conversation with Senator Mhai Valdran: Chavek Gaius's young protégé. Collateral damage._

_At the center of the room, placing a row of short-stemmed glasses on the conference room table, is Miral Dar—another agent—and behind him, a Romulan Arkady has not yet met in person, but whose face he has memorized in preparation for this moment:_

_Kaol Riurren, the one they call the Butcher of Yadalla Prime._

" _Don't be shy, R'Mor," laughs Chavek Gaius, motioning him in. "What have you got there?"_

_Arkady returns a well-practiced smile. "I believe your favorite distillery, Senator."_

_He places the wooden case on the table, where the Senators and military personnel admire the woodwork, then opens it to display a pair of thick glass bottles full of an electric blue liquid._

_"You spoil us," says Chavek Gaius._

_"Please, allow me."_

_Arkady pours first for the two Senators, then to the military personnel, in order of rank: Isha Movan, Galan Pardek, Kaol Riurren, and Miral Dar. The last two glasses he pours for Rhian and himself. Easily and without hesitation, he slips a pill capsule into Rhian's ale, where it dissolves instantly. He then turns and hands her the glass, unnoticed._

_The Butcher of Yadalla Prime raises his with a smile as Isha Movan offers a toast. They drink to the Empire, the Praetor, and the Praetor's health—in that order._

_The minutes tick by. It's dull conversation, nothing Arkady hasn't heard before. An observation here about the successes of the imperial campaigns on the outer rim. A remark there about an Andorian blood feud that will impact reports from intelligence agents embedded in that part of the quadrant. Rumors about the Federation Council, gridlocked and squabbling over terraforming regulations._

_The wooden case sits on the edge of the table, untouched, unnoticed._

_It is only a few minutes before Rhian stumbles and pitches to the side with a gasp, her face a mask of surprise as her equilibrium abandons her._

_"A little strong for you, centurion?" laughs Chavek Gaius, swishing the liquid in his glass._

_Arkady darts forward and grasps Rhian's upper arm, hissing to her as if in quiet rage: "You must master yourself."_

_Rhian does not respond, but sways in his grip._

_"Perhaps," says Galan Pardek coolly, "the centurion requires rest."_

_"I will accompany her," Arkady says._

_"See that you do," Pardek answers, already turning back to Isha Movan._

_Rhian in tow, Arkady is within a meter of the door when Kaol Riurren calls after him: "Centurion R'Mor."_

_Arkady turns. "Sir."_

_The Butcher of Yadalla Prime smiles, glancing briefly at Rhian before addressing Arkady again._

" _A pleasant day to you."_

_His expression is stone-faced as they leave the administrative building. This is deliberate, to deter curious stares, but no one questions him. He steers Rhian along a path that leads them away from the main road, out of the Krocton Segment and into the red-light district._

_Rhian regains the ability to speak, and slurs something to him in low Romulan, the dialect of family, friends, and lovers:_

_"You did something to me."_

_Arkady does not reply. He is focused on the alley ahead, picturing the nondescript metal door that leads to the basement where he will find the tools to change his identity again. Centurion Dhiemm R'Mor will become Hrien Keras, a simple laborer bound for the Remus dilithium mines._

_Rhian's presence at his side was unplanned until last night. He is improvising._

_They are far from the central administrative building when the explosion rocks the ground beneath their feet. Rhian's eyes widen in understanding as she cranes her head around, slow and clumsy, but they've reached the door, and Arkady jerks her inside._

_The basement is quiet and nearly empty. Against the right wall is a mirror, a pair of cabinets, and a sink. To the left, a spartan cot and a wooden chair. A metal table divides the room. He stuffs Rhian into the chair and retrieves a hypospray from the cabinet, injecting its contents directly into her neck. He turns back to the cabinets and removes a miner's pack, weathered and beaten, containing a comm with a coded encryption, an imperial civilian ID, a set of work clothes. In the side pocket, a small case no larger than his hand, containing three capsules of clear liquid, each intended for the cartridge of a hypospray. They are labeled in code: analgesic, transmutative, sedative._

_The situation is now precarious. For two days, the compounds will weave their way through his bloodstream; the second of the three will alter his physical appearance. If they find him here after the first twenty-four hours, he will seem a simple drug addict, this basement a mere narcotics den. If they find him before twenty-four hours are up, it will hardly matter._

_"What have you done?" Rhian, standing behind him, now lucid from the injection._

_"My duty," he answers, without turning around._

_"To_ whom? _"_

_She's angry, rightly so._

_Arkady pauses. There's no point in lying to her anymore. "To the United Federation of Planets."_

_"Why would you save me?"_

_How many times have they sat behind closed doors, a bottle of ale and a chessboard between them while she hissed about imperial bureaucracy and the pointless mess in the outer rim colonies? How many moments where she's murmured things like_ the Federation may be feeble and meddlesome, but at least they can speak their minds _. He isn't naïve enough to mistake this for open dissent. But the alternative was to leave her in the conference room._

_Arkady says none of this. "To offer you a chance at a better life," he says instead._

_"To defect."_

_"Yes."_

_Rhian is silent for a moment before responding. "What is your name?" she asks._

_Arkady feels his heart sink._

_As part of his cover, in his first year on Romulus he intimated that he was running side deals with local smugglers running ale shipments through the Neutral Zone. She silenced him with a sharp look: the less she knew, the better._

_If she were accepting his offer, she would never ask him his real name._

_He does not turn, but speaks softly. He is breaking protocol, but it no longer matters, and he wants her to know._

_"Arkady."_

_When he turns, she is two steps away, holding the thin blade he knows she keeps hidden on her person. He blocks the jab with his left forearm. The next time she swipes at him he miscalculates and loses his left ring finger._

_The fight is long and bloody. She is as tall and trained as he, and stronger than any human—but she is still weak from the drugged ale. When he is finally able to twist the blade from her grasp, to land a blow that knocks her off-balance, to jerk her roughly into his grip, and to wrap an arm around her throat, it doesn't take long._

_When it is done, he strips the body and props it upright against the wall, turning the face against the stone so the bruises on the throat are not visible. He retrieves the hypo he used on the body earlier and pricks the needle into the vein of the left arm, positioning the right hand so that it is holding the injection._

_The cabinet has a medkit. He injects himself with simple adrenaline and tends to his injuries. He stanches the blood oozing from the stump on his left hand—still dark green—and disinfects the wound, then cauterizes it and wraps it in gauze. Treats the bruises and scratches on his face. He locates his finger on the floor beside the wall. He knows it could be attached in a proper medical facility, but he doesn't have the option. He gives it only a glance before placing it among the things to be destroyed._

_It seems a small price to pay._

_The adrenaline gives him time and energy to clean up the rest of the blood and dispense with the uniforms, carefully dissolving them, along with the finger and his military ID—in an acidic solution. He checks the reinforcements on the basement door, changes into the work clothes and sits on the cot, capsules and hypospray in hand._

_The first injection, the analgesic, goes into his arm. The second, the transmutative, goes into his neck. He lays down on his side. He spares one last glance at the body propped against the wall before administering the sedative._

* * *

The dream ends there, every time.

Arkady pushes himself upright, removing the book from his chest and glancing briefly at the title: _The Blind Assassin_.

He has no memory of picking it up, and yet he must have been reading it. It's open to a chapter nearly thirty pages in. More and more he finds time slipping from him like this, small moments and details missing from his day. Or he awakens in unfamiliar places—that is, not his own bed in his own apartment—without remembering falling asleep. To say nothing of the wet, rattling cough keeping him up at night, a recent development that saps his energy and causes his next-door neighbors to comment in concern.

He shakes his head and gets to his feet. Perhaps it's the dream, remnants of the Krocton Segment, the explosion, the basement, still able to catch him off-guard after all these years. He's rarely so disturbed by it. He doesn't glorify his actions from his time off-planet, but he's had a lifetime to come to terms with them.

The decades following the Romulan Wars were tense and brutal in their own manner, paving the way for the fledgling Federation and for Starfleet, the arm of its diplomatic aspirations. Today when he hears discontented chatter about the Federation—TV pundits' colorful criticisms, his neighbors' stark disapproval of the fleet's continued presence in the Laurentian System—Arkady finds himself unable to relate.

_You have no idea what we were capable of._

No. Things are better now.

There are low murmurs coming from the kitchen. Arkady moves slowly toward them.

Doubtless he's missed dinner. The clock on the wall reads 10:15 pm. Fortunately he isn't hungry—another thing he's slowly losing to old age—but he's said more than once that he'd like to help his daughter-in-law cook at some point, in return for all the meals he's shared at her table. Sofiya has never specifically asked, and Arkady is almost certain she won't, at least not anytime soon. They hardly know each other, after all. It's only been three years since she and Andrei moved to St. Petersburg, shortly after Pavel left for the Academy. She seems not to know what to make of him, this strange old man who argues with her husband and plays chess with her son. Like Pavel, she thinks Arkady is a retired engineer, his missing finger the result of a machinery malfunction on a remote mining planet. This the result of an agreement Arkady made with Andrei long ago to leave the past in the past.

In the kitchen, Andrei and Sofiya are standing, heads together, before the small comm console where they receive news alerts and sometimes play the radio.

"I apologize—I meant to help with dinner," Arkady says. He's about to offer to do the dishes or make a pot of tea, but then Sofiya and Andrei turn toward him. Andrei's mouth is a grim line, Sofiya's face drained of color.

Arkady steps forward. "What's happened?"

"There's been a seismic disturbance on Vulcan," Andrei says, "on a massive scale. They've mobilized the senior Starfleet cadets to evacuate the planet."

"All of them?"

Andrei nods.

Arkady darts a glance at Sofiya. "You haven't heard from him."

His daughter-in-law shakes her head. "The news says all communications with the ships have gone dark. They can't talk with anyone in Vulcan space. It's been like this for more than half an hour."

The kitchen falls silent. The scene has almost less clarity than the dream he just relived. The notion of an earthquake large enough to prompt a planet-wide evacuation of Vulcan is almost inconceivable.

Theoretically though, even if Vulcan is being struck with a natural disaster of that scale, Pavel will be safe. He'll be at a navigation console aboard a starship, far from the danger on the planet itself. As a stellar cartographer, he's unlikely to be chosen for an away mission.

Then the comm console _dings_ with another news alert. Andrei and Sofiya turn, and he hears Sofiya gasp. He wedges himself between them and reads the headline, and suddenly the room is degrees colder.

_Vulcan Destroyed in Planetwide Attack_

And:

_Six Starfleet Ships Destroyed in Battle with Unknown Romulan Vessel_

"No," Sofiya whispers beside him. "No, _no_ …" She steps away from the console, hands fluttering to her mouth. Andrei steps back to put his arms around her, and Arkady steps forward, scanning the article. It's short, a mere stub—a translation of the Standard version from the San Francisco Chronicle. He taps the link to the Chronicle article and scans it.

"One ship made it out," he says.

"One ship!" Sofiya cries. "Out of _seven!_ "

"Which?" This from Andrei, an unmistakable tremor in is voice.

"The USS _Enterprise_." Arkady turns immediately to his son. "I can find out if Pavel was on it."

Andrei swallows hard and nods, but Sofiya stares. "How?"

Arkady doesn't bother to answer. He moves as quickly as his body will permit into the living room, searching for his comm. Behind him, he hears Sofiya pull out of Andrei's arms and follow him. "How?" she demands again.

"I don't have time to explain."

She ignores him, fear turning to anger in the blink of an eye. "Then how can you know?" She turns to Andrei, switching to Standard, and Arkady feels his blood boil. They always did this when Pavel was young, when they didn't want the boy to understand them. Andrei, of course, knows Arkady can understand them full well. Sofiya does not. " _How can he possibly have that information, Andrei?"_

The thought of Vulcan, a hole among the stars, and scattered images of broken ships swim through his mind's eye. Then the thought of Pavel. Pavel, who has been sending old-fashioned paper notes to his mother ever since his first month at the Academy, who explains new lessons in stellar cartography every time he visits, who has gotten so good at chess that Arkady, who has studied the game since he was ten, now has to watch himself when they play. Pavel who dreams of _boldly going where no one has gone before_. Pavel in the jaws of an unknown Romulan vessel on the far side of the quadrant.

Sofiya rounds on her husband, and the restraint of Arkady's youth abandons him:

_"Because I have contacts at Starfleet, and I will_ use them!"

The room is silent. Sofiya is staring wide-eyed, Andrei watching him with apprehension. Sofiya is holding his comm. He takes a deep breath and steps forward, switching back to Russian, his hand outstretched.

"Give me the comm."

Sofiya hands it over.

He keys in the signal of Vice Admiral Eliza Mason, his intelligence contact for fifteen years, before she was snapped up by Starfleet communications.

Sofiya's gaze never leaves his face. "When did you learn Standard?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Dad," Andrei warns.

Arkady glances up. "I have spoken it for many years." He does not offer further explanation.

It takes ten minutes to get Eliza Mason on the line, and five after that before she can reach the commander in charge of Pavel's assignment. When the officer tells him, Arkady makes him confirm it by sending him the record of Pavel's assignment, before he hangs up.

Sofiya and Andrei are staring at him.

"He is stationed on the _Enterprise_ ," Arkady says.

Sofiya lets out a stifled sob, and sits on the couch. Andrei joins her, relieved and numb. He meets Arkady's eyes.

"Thank you," he says, softly.

An hour later, the house is quiet. Andrei is in the kitchen, making calls to relatives. In the living room, the television is on but muted, closed captioning in Russian scrolling across the screen, Sofiya tense and exhausted on the couch. Arkady sets a tray down on the coffee table with a pot of tea and three mugs. He reaches for his with his left hand, aware of how Sofiya watches as he does, glancing at the stump of his ring finger with new understanding.

"You didn't get that in an engineering accident, did you." It isn't a question.

Arkady shakes his head.

"What really happened?"

He glances at her, then back to the television, where shell-shocked pundits are spinning theories about the technology that was used to destroy Vulcan. _Weapons of mass destruction_ , one keeps saying over and over, angrier and angrier each time. The Romulan vessel declared itself independent of the Empire, but even still: if the Romulans possess that kind of technology, the implications are staggering.

Arkady finally tears his eyes from the screen: "It's a long story."

Sofiya looks archly at him, and for a moment she so much resembles Pavel that Arkady almost laughs.

"I'm not going to sleep," she says. She takes a long drink of her tea, watching him over the rim of her mug.

Settled back into the armchair, Arkady feels the weight of his bones, the weight of his years.

"If you won't tell me where you got that, at least tell me how you learned Standard," Sofiya says.

Arkady takes a drink of his tea, and finds himself nodding slowly as he answers, more to himself than to her:

"Yes. I can do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two original characters end up in a hand-to-hand fight, in which Character B cuts off Character A's finger, and Character A ultimately kills Character B. Character A is described concealing/disposing of the evidence of the battle and treating his injuries. Character B is also briefly drugged by Character A.


	5. Katharine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another OC! Gasp! If you've enjoyed these last couple of chapters, I'm thrilled to hear it. If OCs aren't your thing, glad you made it this far anyways! The last two chapters will feature some familiar faces.

_Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland_

The light rain Katharine Scott was caught in on her way home has turned into a heavy rain, hammering the narrow skylight in the ceiling of her small office. She stares at the message thread on the screen of her tablet, the virtual speech bubble containing a short note, text-only, now three hours old:

_Monty, I know you're probably fine, but let me know when you get this. – Kath_

The speech bubble is pale green, meaning the message has been sent, but not received. There are any number of reasons why he hasn't answered her yet. There's no reason to panic, so she doesn't.

Instead she gets up, paces into the kitchen, and turns on the electric kettle. From the cupboard over the drying rack she retrieves a mug and, after a moment's hesitation, a scoop of powdered chai. Normally she wouldn't so much as touch anything so hideously caffeinated at this hour, but she probably won't be sleeping much tonight anyways.

Like everyone else, she received the news in the middle of rehearsal break.

Not her rehearsal, mind. Wednesday is normally her night off. The Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra keeps a busy schedule, but the rest of the week is hers to scratch a living the same way everyone else seems to: giving lessons, holding a second job, or leaning on a partner.

No—when the news about Vulcan came in via San Francisco, Katharine was sitting in the corner of the choral chamber at the Edinburgh College of the Arts, tuning her viola and making notes in her score, surrounded by students half her age and with twice her energy.

She remembers swallowing her annoyance when, three weeks before, the director tapped her for the collaboration. Pro bono, but a one-time thing, and a way to make good with the university.

_And you're local, right? It'll be easy; you won't have to commute_ , he cajoled her.

There was no real argument to be made. It was two session plus the dress rehearsal and concert. So there she was.

The third cello was tapped for the collaboration too. Katharine doesn't know her personally, but knows her name is Emily, and that the previous spring she pushed for the ESO to organize a tour to Vulcan, a music exchange with some obscure university. Katharine was present during that discussion, heard the innocuous ribbing that made its way around the room— _I thought it was all math and science over there, music via algorithms_ —before the director smiled gently and replied, _no way in hell, not on our budget._

Emily approached her, ashen-faced, while Katharine was looking over the third movement. On the woman's small phone screen, Katharine watched as Vulcan crumbled in on itself and disappeared. The news was unfolding rapidly all around them in gasps and starts, over phones and news feeds, via calls to family members, and through a short speech from the choir director about _safe spaces_ and _self-care_ and extending her office hours for anyone who needed to talk.

Like Emily and the other string players, Katharine felt out of her element, shaken by these young people and their raw grief. It wasn't until she was sitting on the second level of the hover bus home, as it wound its way north of the Mile and up the long stretch of Leith Walk to her apartment, that she realized why the vantage point of the video on Emily's news feed was so unnervingly familiar.

In his second or third video message from Delta Vega, Monty had been wrapped in a heavy, standard-issue coat and a blanket for good measure.

"You know," he'd said, shivering, "it's not so bad out here. I think I'm getting closer to fixing the heating mechanism. The other guy's a bit of an odd duck, but I've established conclusively that he _does_ speak Standard, so there's that. Oh, and there's a view!" He turned the screen of his datapad to a wide, scratched window. The camera refocused to show a pale blue sky, a distant planet hanging in the distance. "Well, today there's a view. Believe it nor not, that is Vulcan. Bloody desert planet just a few hundred thousand kilometers away. I'd kill for half an hour on a beach."

Communication with the outpost was hard to make work. The subspace communicator had a few screws loose, and even with Monty's engineering skills it was hard to hold a real-time connection long enough to have a conversation of any real length. So, they had resorted to an old-fashioned kind of communication. It was honestly a bit of a pain in the ass, sitting down at her desk a couple times a month with her PADD and a page full of notes and recording herself in front of a camera. (How those Starfleet captains could just spit out a couple lines of information for their official log without rambling on for half an hour she would never know.) But she and Monty had made a pact never to turn their back on each other a long time ago—back when Greg, the oldest and hottest mess of the three of them, was going through withdrawal in a London rehab clinic. Besides, high-and-mighty Starfleet engineer or no, Monty was still her baby brother, even if he had gotten himself into his current mess all by himself. Kidnapping a _beagle_ , honestly.

Plato pads into the office behind her, whining, toenails scratching on the hardwood, and Katharine realizes she hasn't fed him yet. She gets up again, scratching him behind the ears before following him back into the kitchen to his food dish. He's a shaggy mop of a dog, sweet and insistent, still excitable even though he's no longer a puppy. Another memory: Monty leaning against the wall, in the very spot she's standing now, grinning down at Plato, who is much smaller and doesn't yet have a name.

_Tenacious little bastard, isn't he?_ Monty asks as Plato nudges his wet nose into Katharine's knee.

_I could say the same about some people I know._

Katharine intends it as half a joke, half a compliment, but Monty suddenly grows serious.

_I really think I can make it work, Kath._

_Trans-warp beaming._

_Yes._

In her memory, she kneels on the kitchen floor and scrubs Plato's head with both hands. From his explanation the notion sounds farfetched at best, but Monty's the scientist in the family. If it's possible, he'd be the one to know.

Back in the present, she scoops kibble into Plato's bowl, immersed in a strange calm. It's the sort of thing her granny back in Aberdeen used to call _grace under pressure_ , though she's not sure she can see it that way. Days like these, it seems like more of an internal defense mechanism, an instinctive shutting-down to preserve her sanity. The years have taught her, after all, that certain things are out of her control.

The whims of the director, for instance. Plato's undying fascination with chocolate chips and bow rosin. Monty's impulsiveness and Greg's slow, grinding flirtation with self-destruction.

Vulcan and all its inhabitants—and over five-thousand Starfleet personnel—gone in the blink of an eye.

But there are things _in_ her control as well. The water in Plato's bowl that needs refreshing. Another message, finished but unsent, to Emily the third cello: _if you want to talk, I'm happy to listen_. And the thought hovering at the front of her mind as she wonders about shuttle timetables between Scotland and California.

A few minutes later, the decision has been made. She cancels her Friday lessons, messages her director, and calls Greg, who picks up groggy and irritable.

"This had better be an emergency," he says without preamble, London traffic blaring in the background.

"Evening to you too. Can I ask you a favor?"

"Am I gonna regret it?"

"I need you to take care of the dog."

"Why, where are _you_ going?"

A corner of her mouth quirks as she trots out an old favorite of Monty's:

"The land of sunshine and the avocado."

* * *

In the morning, there's a Chronicle update on the massacre: reports from the USS _Enterprise_ describing the extent of the carnage. A small science vessel from a nearby starbase, the USS _Beichen_ , has confirmed that two ships, the _Antares_ and the _Wolcott_ , seem salvageable—there might be survivors.

Not long after that, a Starfleet notice about a hotline for the loved ones of those were deployed to Vulcan. Katharine tries it on a whim on her way to the shuttle port that night, even though Monty was most likely nowhere near the battle. She waits for close to an hour before giving up, an apologetic robot on the other end occasionally checking in to say her call is appreciated. In-between, tinny piano music plays and plays.

* * *

The Starfleet civilian liaison at the intake counter before her looks harried, his shoulders up to his ears, his eyes strained and bloodshot as if he's been up all night. Which, Katharine thinks, he probably has. He's scanning the console to his right. The small metal name tag on his desk reads _Peter Accum_.

The room is abuzz. Accum is one of seven civilian liaisons working their way through the winding queues of frightened, angry people, all clamoring to know what's become of their child or sibling or friend or lover.

Katharine is leaning slightly against the counter, her umbrella and phone in front of her folded hands.

"What's the name?" Peter Accum asks.

"Montgomery Scott," Katharine says, then adds: "He's my brother."

Accum doesn't look up. "What division?"

"Engineering," Katharine says, "but listen, he isn't a cadet—"

"I understand; we have that list too," Accum cuts her off.

He still isn't looking at her. Katharine swallows her irritation. "No, he's not—excuse me." Accum glances up. ( _Good—progress._ ) "He wasn't deployed to Vulcan. He's stationed on Delta Vega. I know nothing happened to the outpost, but I haven't been able to reach him, and—"

_"For god's sake, get out of the damn line!"_

The shout comes from behind and catches her off-guard. She feels heat rushing to her face as she pivots and finds the source: a woman with dull red curls and overflowing eyes, her lips pressed into a quivering line, her fists clenched.

" _Hey!"_ Accum, from behind her now, sharp and angry.

The woman ignores him. "Some of us have kids out there!" The end of the sentence turns her shout into a sob.

Katharine turns back to the intake desk, her shoulders hunched against the rest of the room. The queue has gone quiet, as well as the queues to her left and right, eyes pulled in her direction by the shouting. For a moment, she's a child again, scraping away at her viola in the third row of the school orchestra, a full measure ahead of the rest of her section, the conductor's eyes fixing on her as he stops rehearsal just to tell her to leave.

Accum looks up at her again and speaks softly. "Ma'am, I'm really sorry, but I don't know that we have that information on hand. If you could try back in a few hours—we're really backed up—"

"It's fine."

Katharine isn't sure how she manages to force these words out. Her throat is tight, her face flushed with more anger than she's felt in years. She breaks off and walks quickly out of the office and into the square without looking back.

Outside it's sunny and cold. She stands at the empty kiosk at the center of the square, breathing hard, the crisp air sharp on her hot face. The last time she was here, upwards of fifteen years ago for Monty's graduation ceremony, the place was a sea of cadet red. Now the campus is all but empty, unnervingly so.

A sudden hand taps her shoulder and she whips around to see a man before her. Older than her, though not by much, with tan skin and graying temples.

"Sorry—I didn't mean to startle you." He man holds something out to her, and Katharine looks down and realizes it's her umbrella. "You dropped this," the man says.

"Thank you," she manages.

The man gives her a brief smile. "Are you all right?"

"Sorry?"

"The woman in there."

"Oh." She pauses, still shaken. "I'll be fine."

The man doesn't move. "Who are you looking for?"

Katharine blinks at him for a moment—before the answer comes tumbling out of her mouth: "My brother. He—it's ridiculous. I don't know why I thought this would be the place to ask. He wasn't deployed to Vulcan, he's just stationed on Delta Vega. He's probably fine—I just haven't heard from him and he's usually quick about answering—" Then the words run out and she lifts her hands helplessly and lets them fall, glancing off toward the Bay, reality tumbling in on her.

Of _course_ the woman in the queue yelled at her. Mum would've done the same, and even though Greg doesn't have kids Katharine can see him having a similar meltdown. He inherited all her insecurities while she and Monty escaped unscathed—

"It's ok."

With two simple words, the man derails her train of thought again. Katharine looks back at him. "Thanks," she says. Then she remembers that he followed her out of the civilian liaison office, meaning he's here for the same reason. "Who are you looking for?" she asks.

"An old friend's daughter. Her parents live on Deneva. They're making their way here now, but I live in Vancouver, so I told them I'd find out what I can."

"Do you know which ship…?"

The man's gentle face pulls into a grimace. "We believe the _Wolcott_."

"Oh." In the queue, she'd waited among parents and siblings and friends and significant others, overheard their quiet conversations. They were all waiting to hear the coveted phrase, _deployed with the_ Enterprise: the best guarantee of their cadet's safety. "Weren't there some survivors from the _Wolcott_?" she asks finally.

"A few." The man is looking out at the Bay now, between the gaps in the buildings. "But…you see, she's a communications cadet. Training to be a code-breaker. I think if she were all right she would have found a way to contact them by now."

Katharine stares at him, searching for the right words, but he doesn't wait for her answer.

"I think at this point they just need to know. Officially, I mean. Then they can take next steps."

Then it's quiet between them, because there are no right words to answer that.

After a few moments, he turns back to her. "You sound like you're coming from across the pond. Am I right?"

Katharine nods—grateful for a question she can answer. "I am. Edinburgh."

"It's rather late for you, then." There's a vague smile playing at the corner of his mouth, and despite herself, Katharine laughs.

"That's one way to put it. I could use a coffee right now, actually." She glances around the square—all administrative buildings. She remembers getting breakfast in an on-campus café before Monty's graduation ceremony, but trying to find it would be an exercise in futility.

To her surprise, the man points his thumb over his left shoulder toward the headlands. "I know a place a couple of blocks from here. Would you care to join me?"

She feels her smile falter and disappear. "I feel like I'm keeping you." _I am keeping you._

He shrugs. "That line isn't going away anytime soon. And unless I heard incorrectly, it sounds like you have some time to kill as well." He starts walking, half-sideways, half-backwards, waiting for her to fall into step beside him.

When they cross the street that leads them off campus, he turns to her again. "I never caught your name."

"Katharine," she says.

He extends a hand. "Paul."

* * *

Paul's coffee shop is really a diner: an old-fashioned piece of Americana that Monty brought up from time to time during his years as a cadet. Katharine doesn't have much experience with diners, but she finds that the coffee does the job, and the food isn't half bad either.

Their server is named Maddie. At least, that's what the nametag clipped to her apron says. She's platinum blonde and young—hardly sixteen, by the look of her—and either she's new or shaken by the attacks, but it all comes down to the same thing: she isn't very good at her job. She makes a stab at small talk, blabbering about how it's the sunniest day on record for February in San Francisco, then apologizing for mixing up their order. Paul is good at reassuring her she's doing fine, and Katharine is good at sipping her coffee and biting her tongue.

An hour ticks by during which Katharine learns the following things: one, Paul is a patent lawyer, specializing in robotics. He has an interest in the legal side of AI, the budding field generating prototype technology faster than the law can keep up with. Two, Paul has known his friends—the couple on Deneva—since they attended university together in Boulder. He was there when their daughter was born, three weeks early on a starbase halfway to the colony. (A proverbial "space baby.") And three, he's just as interested in listening to her blabber about Monty and Greg and Plato and the symphony as she is in hearing him talk about his own life.

Maddie comes around periodically to refresh their coffee, and Katharine realizes how oddly liberating it is to have the ear of a complete stranger—to be somewhere no one has prior knowledge of her life's story. She works her way through the gritty details, all the way from her parents' divorce to Greg's alcohol problem and Monty's exile to Delta Vega, before he interrupts her.

"Hang on—did you say a beagle?"

"Yes! A bloody beagle!" She's into a good-natured rant—a familiar one by now. "On his mad-scientist quest for transport—trans-warp—whatever." She takes a sip of her coffee, waving her hand. The specifics don't matter.

Paul leans forward. "I've heard this story."

Katharine blinks. "What?"

"The beagle incident? As in Admiral Jonathan Archer's beagle? It's turning into an urban legend."

Katharine stares at him. "Where did _you_ hear it?" she asks incredulously—just as the answer comes to her.

_From your_ _missing cadet._

Before Paul can answer, a jolt slams through the floor beneath her feet, strong enough to shake the diner's wide glass windows, strong enough to make her slop hot coffee out of her mug and onto her hand. She yelps and jerks back.

"Are you all right?" Paul's dark eyes are wide.

Katharine doesn't have time to respond, to ask if this is one of the infamous San Francisco earthquakes she's heard so much about. There's a collective gasp from the diner patrons, and for a split second the blue sky is a blaze of yellow, as if they've been plunged into the eye of a hurricane.

Maddie hurries outside without bothering to put down the coffee pot, and without understanding why Katharine follows with Paul on her heels. Over the tops of Starfleet's shiny administrative buildings, there is a beam of fire cutting down through the sky towards the Bay. Clouds of steam are rising from the water, obscuring the Bridge, and Katharine knows without needing to check that this is the drill the news outlets have been jabbering about for the last twenty-four hours, that high in the atmosphere is the Romulan ship that destroyed Vulcan, that decimated six Starfleet vessels, that killed Paul's friend's daughter and possibly even Monty too.

A hand around hers, Paul's voice to her right, measured but urgent: "We have to get somewhere safe."

Safe? There is nowhere safe.

Katharine allows herself to be pulled anyways, claimed by the same numbness that washed over her in her tiny Leith flat.

Here she is on the far side of the world—this world in which she can cross oceans and continents in minutes via shuttlecraft, in which starships can travel at warp speed to distant planets millions of kilometers away. This world, rendered huge and impassable by time that she no longer has.

She is going to die. Not with Monty or Greg or Mum or Dad or Plato, not with her colleagues in the symphony, hell, not even with the grieving ECA choir students—but running through the streets of San Francisco, holding hands with a man she's barely met.

She is going to die on February 11, 2258: the sunniest day on record.

* * *

Of course, that isn't what happens.

While the earth shakes beneath their feet and they sprint to where Paul's flitter is crammed into a parking garage, photon torpedo fire decapitates the drill, sending it plunging into the Bay, missing the Bridge by meters. The Romulan ship goes to warp, chasing a tiny craft the Chronicle will later describe as a jellyfish. Then everything falls silent again. The steam clears, the water settles, the ground stills.

All this Katharine discovers later, because by that time she and Paul are halfway to Vancouver.

From the living room of Paul's flat, they watch and listen as the news story unfolds piece by piece over the next several hours: the Romulan ship gone, destroyed some several million kilometers away by the same technology it used to destroy Vulcan. Sabotaged by the crew of the USS _Enterprise_ , thought to be on course for the Laurentian System, but in reality tracking down the Romulan ship, and now limping back to Earth on half-impulse power.

They keep the TV on as Paul first makes a pot of tea, then leaves a subspace message for his friends en route from Deneva. Katharine calls Greg first, then Mum, then Dad, then her friends in the orchestra, with the same message every time: "I'm alive; I'm with a friend." Still nothing from Monty, but she sends him another message anyways.

Late in the evening, Paul orders takeout Indian and they sit in front of the TV, critiquing the newscasters, when suddenly her tablet chimes with an incoming call, ID unknown, audio only. Subspace. She picks up.

"Hello?"

" _Kath_?"

Katharine sits up so fast she nearly sends yellow curry flying all over Paul's couch.

" _Monty?"_

Monty starts laughing over the crackly subspace connection, the same shrieky, half-crazed laugh he's had since he was a hyperactive nine-year-old.

She's relieved, then flushed with anger. "Where've you been, you stupid git? I've been halfway around the globe looking for you!"

Monty's laughter dies away into half-suppressed giggles.

"You've been halfway around the globe? You'll never guess where I've been."

And she doesn't. He launches right into it: an insane story about a marooned cadet and an old Vulcan and trans-warp beaming—apparently, it's possible—and how he's currently acting Chief Engineer of the USS _Enterprise_.

When Monty's almost breathless, babbling about ejecting the ship's warp core to keep the _Enterprise_ —which he's already started talking about like a lover—from being sucked into a black hole, Katharine notices out of the corner of her eye that there's a fresh cup of tea on the kitchen counter, and that Paul has slipped quietly from the room.


	6. Winona

_Starfleet General Hospital, San Francisco, California_

The nurse working the front desk does an involuntary double-take when Winona gives him her name. "You're—" he begins, but breaks off, and immediately looks down at the PADD on the counter between them, an embarrassed flush creeping up about his ears.

She must look as annoyed as she feels, then.

"Let me just double-check something," he says quickly, and disappears down the hall. He has a little more grace than the flitter cabbie who dropped her off at the visitors' entrance just minutes ago.

" _The_ Winona Kirk?" he asked, eyeing her in the rearview mirror, before saying something about _well, you sure raised that boy right_ and something else about _goddamn alien extremists_ , as she hastily dug the credits she owed him out of her wallet.

The nurse returns to the front desk and motions for her to follow him down the hall, still flushed and now taciturn.

Ironically, Winona thinks, not for the first time, it's George who would've been good at this sort of thing. He was always the one who knew how to talk to people. That had been clear from the first time they met, at a cramped party in some basement rec room, he with a friendly grin and a barrel of genuine curiosity, she (literally standing against the wall) with a half-empty beer and a promise to herself to stay one more half-hour before retreating to her quiet dorm room and curling up with a book for the rest of the night.

"Do you like Exploding Tribbles?"he asked after introducing himself, half-shouting over the too-loud classical music.

It was hard to tell if that was supposed to be a come-on. " _What?_ " she shouted back.

"It's a card game! Some of us are gonna play a couple rounds. Wanna join?"

"I don't know how!"

"Me neither!"

It was a better option than standing around for another half-hour, so she let him lead her back to the coffee table where the game was set up. By the time they made their way over there were too many eager cadets to play alone, so they played as a team and lost horribly together. By that point someone had changed the music to something quieter. They sat and talked, side-by-side on the floor as friend after friend tottered off to their rooms—or other peoples' rooms—until suddenly it was four a.m., and the junior engineering cadet who had organized the whole thing was recruiting stragglers to help her clean up.

Two days later, George was jogging to catch up with her as she crossed the quad to her geology lecture and asking if she wanted to get lunch together. A year after that, Winona's mother was smiling approvingly at her after meeting him for the first time.

_He really brings you out of your shell._

Now, most days Winona doesn't think about him. It's been more than twenty-five years and she's had to move on, even if the rest of the world hasn't. Ten years of letting her grief swallow her whole taught her that.

Of course, by the time she came to that realization it was too late, and her tenuous little family—the one she'd tried to reconstruct in of the rubble of the Kelvin disaster—was scattering. Frank to state prison after turning out to be an abusive shit. Fourteen-year-old Sam to George's parents in Indiana. Ten-year-old Jim to work as a farmhand on an offworld colony: an alternative to a two-year stint in juvie after driving Frank's antique corvette into the Riverside Quarry. And nothing for her to do but continue escaping to the stars, research assignments taking her further and further into the black. For a solid two years, she thought she had finally hit rock bottom.

Then Tarsus happened, and Jim came home malnourished and silent, no matter how many ways she asked him to _talk to me, please; I never should have let them send you there, but if you would just talk to me maybe I could try to make it right_ —and the real journey to rock bottom began. That was the stretch of years when Sam wouldn't talk to her and Jim was in and out of reform school for breaking into other peoples' houses—not to steal things, mind, but just because he _could_. When she finally resigned her commission, the possibility of being called away on a long-term assignment too great while trying to corral a self-destructive thirteen-year-old. When she made a two-hour round-trip commute to UC Davis three days a week for a master's in agricultural terraforming. At the time, going back to school was the only thing that made her feel useful, goal-oriented. She'd hoped it could take them off-planet. There were terraforming research jobs available without the implied dangers of life on a starship—ones that allowed scientists to bring family members with them. Of course, those hopes died the day Jim started a fire that was a little too big for him to put out, and the State of Iowa finally declared what Winona had known all along.

So she'd been a shit mother. Maybe she just wasn't cut out for it. For all _her_ mother's fawning approval of George, she hadn't hidden her skepticism when Winona married at twenty-two and gave birth to Sam at twenty-four. On the days she felt sorry for herself, Winona thought that maybe with George at her side things would have been different. On the days she was angry with herself, she thought of the other Starfleet parents who'd lost spouses to the service. She knew one or two personally. But maybe that life was meant for other, stronger people.

Five years later, she'd gotten Chris's first letter. Yes, _letter—_ because she can hardly use the word "text" for the composed, multi-paragraph dispatch that appeared in her inbox, now three-and-a-half years ago to the day. He was polite, professional. Detailed.

_Dear Lieutenant Kirk,_

_You don't know me, but I'm writing to you in my capacity as a recruiting officer for Starfleet. About three weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting your son, James, and it seems I've convinced him to enlist._

Chris's letter was full of words like _aptitude_ and _potential_ , and Winona had to wonder for a moment if he'd somehow run into a different Jim Kirk—except that he'd also used words like _guts_ and _lack of caution_ , and the paragraph detailing how they'd met sounded _exactly_ like Jim. She'd written back—first to correct him, since she hadn't been a commissioned officer for close to a decade—and then to answer the unwritten question that was visible between every line. How did she feel about Jim's enlisting in the same organization that had killed her husband? What Chris didn't realize was that her opinion hardly mattered. Jim's decisions were his own. He'd made that abundantly clear the last time they'd seen each other.

Before storming out of the old farmhouse with nothing but a small duffel and the clothes on his back, he'd demanded answers from her too. Where had she been when he was six years old and Sam had yelled at him that they couldn't celebrate his birthday the day of, then refused to explain why? Where had she been when Frank was beating the tar out of him every other week? When he'd been starving to death on Tarsus IV?

( _Where were_ _you? Where the_ fuck _where you?_ )

Then he was gone, and the last barrier keeping Winona on Earth had fallen away.

On the fifth floor of Starfleet General, the nurse leads her to a door and it opens with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a bio scanner console and a retractable, opaque room divider about a meter long. There's an armchair that looks mass-produced and uncomfortable next to a low coffee table where someone has left a plant: a tiny cactus, and next to it an old-fashioned paper card. Where the room divider ends, Winona can see the edge of a hospital bed.

"Sir," the nurse calls out, and a tired voice answers.

"Yeah?"

"Someone to see you."

The voice brightens a fraction: "Ok. Thanks, Ames."

The nurse—Ames—retreats, and the door slides shut behind him. The voice addresses Winona: "You'll have to come around—I can't figure out how to get this damn thing to retract." A hand pats the opaque plastic. "There's a chair."

On the other side of the room divider, Christopher Pike is alert, sitting up and reading something on a PADD. In person, he's not wildly different from his picture: neither particularly thin nor particularly broad-shouldered, light brown hair starting to go gray at the temples, lines at the corners of his mouth. But he also looks exhausted, with deep circles beneath his eyes, and a heaviness that seems to cling to his shoulders.

"Winona," he says.

"Chris," she replies.

Being on a first-name basis is suddenly uncomfortable, in the way that all virtual correspondences are rendered surreal when thrown into the physical world. He's no longer just a name on a contact file, no longer "Dear Chris, thanks for your letter. How goes the search for a new XO?" but Christopher Pike, Starfleet captain and survivor of the Battle of Vulcan.

"Nice to finally meet you in person," he says dryly, then gestures at the chair at his bedside. "Please."

At least they're on the same page. Winona sits. "How are you…" she begins, but trails off. His last letter was more of a check-in than anything, a bid to preempt her worry once the 24-hour news cycle caught up to her neck of the woods: _I'm alive and so is Jim_. He mentioned the injury only briefly: nerve damage to the spinal cord, and something about _I'll be fine_ and being in the hands of _some of the best doctors in the fleet_.

His expression darkens a fraction. "What's the verdict?" he asks, finishing the thought for her. "Not great."

Winona blinks. "I'm sorry."

He glances down at his legs, immobile and tucked away beneath the blanket and shrugs, his mouth a hard line. "It is what it is."

Which, Winona knows from experience, doesn't make it any easier.

Pike lets out a sigh through his nose and looks back up, his eyes a little brighter, conspiratorial. "I bet you'll want to hear about Jim," he says. "How much do you know?"

"Only what the news feeds say," she answers, truthfully.

At this, the corners of Pike's mouth quirk upward. She has the official story, so he gives her the unofficial one: how one of the medical officers— _as it happens, my current primary physician_ , he laughs—smuggled Jim onto the _Enterprise_ as the fleet deployed to Vulcan. How Jim burst onto the Bridge with zero warning, having reasoned out that Vulcan was under attack. How—against all of Pike's expectations—Jim appeared in the bowels of the _Narada_ to come back for him. About how, in the wake of the carnage, there are battlefield promotions under consideration. How Jim is poised to become the youngest-ever captain in the history of the 'fleet.

"He doesn't know yet," Pike tells her, "but it'll most likely be decided by the end of the week."

He's smiling as he says this, a sort of half-smile that hints at something just under the surface that he isn't saying. Pride in Jim, Winona realizes.

She doesn't say she's proud of him too. She doesn't ask, _when will he be notified?_ or _when is the ceremony?_ She doesn't say, _he's just like his father_ or _I always knew he had it in him_. Especially not that last part.

She didn't know Jim had greatness in him—or the capacity to be the kind of leader Pike is describing to her. She only ever knew him as a scared, angry boy, who'd sooner drive a car off a cliff or light an empty barn on fire than let her know him.

So instead she asks, "Is he ready?"

The vague smile disappears from Pike's face, replaced with an expression of gravity. "There's no one else I'd want running my ship." He pauses. "You know, if you want I can give you his comm signal."

To her horror Winona feels a stab of envy that Pike— _Chris_ , who lies haggard and broken in a Starfleet hospital bed—was the one who was finally able to pull Jim out of the hole she dug.

"He doesn't need that right now," she says, and what she means is, _he doesn't need me anymore._

No—he never has. Jim was always going to find his own way, to make his own path. She cannot, _will not_ take credit for that.

Pike's expression is unreadable. "Well…" he says, hesitantly, "if you change your mind, let me know. Maybe I can organize something."

Maybe he can corner Jim and get him to talk to her. Facilitate—or force—a reunion. Winona shakes her head and smiles back for Pike's benefit, a smile she knows he can see straight through.

To his credit, Pike doesn't press the point. For the remainder of her visit, they talk instead about things bigger than themselves: the search for a planet where the Vulcan survivors can establish a colony, the long journey that will be reconstructing the fleet, the Federation's shift in focus from outreach to defense, the renewed calls to pull out of the Laurentian System. As in his letters, Pike is opinionated and thoughtful—angered by some policy decisions, hopeful about others. They part ways with a promise to keep in touch, one Winona knows Pike will hold himself to.

When she finally takes the light rail back to the shuttle station, it's late in the day. There's a damp, chilly breeze and a dark blanket of clouds overhead. As the train crosses the Bridge, she can see a Starfleet research vessel, rocking against the choppy waters of the Bay. Most likely a diving team excavating the pieces of the Romulan drill and assessing its impact on the Bay Area fault lines. Documenting the damage.

_Vulcan and most of its inhabitants, gone._

_Chris Pike, unable to walk._

_Jim, a stranger._

The light rail arrives at the civilian shuttle station and Winona shakes those thoughts from her head as she exits the train. Wishes don't change facts—she learned that a long time ago. There's nothing for her to do now but keep moving, to stay focused on her team, her work.

_He'll be all right,_ she thinks. _It's enough._

She can almost make herself believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more after this, friends. Thanks for sticking around. "Exploding Tribbles" is derived from Elan Lee's delightful "Exploding Kittens."


	7. Sarek

_Shuttlecraft_ Galileo _, Beta Quadrant_

They have already begun calling it the "Battle of Vulcan."

This Sarek learns with the volume on his PADD at the lowest possible setting, the tiny yet surprisingly painful earphone speakers he wears a mere courtesy to his fellow passengers. Politeness is logical; in the privacy of his quarters at the embassy in San Francisco, he would have left them out.

The podcast is called _Idle Chatter_ , transmitted via subspace channel once every Terran week. Its commentators, a trio of former lawyers turned reporters, spend the hour discussing the political developments of the day, primarily on Earth but also across the different Federation worlds. They engage one another in well-informed debate, broken by innocuous joking and teasing. In the episode he is listening to, they are uncharacteristically subdued, bereft of their usual pointed remarks. This is unsurprising. The episode was originally aired on stardate 2258.43, the day after the attack. Sarek is catching up.

His decision to use his time aboard the shuttlecraft to listen is logical. While he prepares to help with relocating the Vulcan refugees—survivors—from their temporary accommodations to whichever planet will ultimately become their new home, he will be using Standard much less regularly than in the past. He must maintain his proficiency.

The decision, he knows, is also illogical. There is no need for him to listen to _Idle Chatter_ to remain informed about the news of the day, and yet he finds himself unable to ignore the download notifications on his PADD. How many times had he joined Amanda listening to it in their kitchen at Shi'Kahr, drinking tea and stripping plomeek shoots for their evening meal together? How many times had she laughed unexpectedly at a passing comment, paused thoughtfully at an argument being thrown back and forth between the commentators? She too had no need to listen to _Idle Chatter_ to remain informed, but rather listened as a way to "stay connected" to Earth. Even now he doesn't fully understand how. Ostensibly the good-natured arguing reminded her of politically-charged debates among her immediate family members at the dinner table.

Then again, he never needed to understand before. Amanda's interest in the show was simply a fact of life.

His fellow passengers in the shuttle are, like him, absorbed in their own affairs. Aside from the pilot, there are three in total: a pair of non-military agriculture experts, and a Starfleet geologist. The agricultural experts are deep in quiet conversation, the geologist buried in files on her PADD. Early in the seven-hour journey, she attempted to engage him in conversation, uncomfortable with his silence. Or perhaps uncomfortable with him, feeling an illogical need to adopt new protocols in speaking to a member of an endangered species.

The headphones, Sarek admits to himself, are also a way to discourage her from expressing sympathy to him. He does not want her to tell him—like so many have done over the last several weeks—that she is sorry. He knows this is unfair of him. Humans' tendency to apologize for something which is not their fault is, after all, a method of self-reassurance. Humans find it emotionally necessary to acknowledge the difficulties of others. Not to do so would be...painful. This fact renders their apologies no less discomfiting.

Ahead in the cockpit, which is open to the passenger cabin, the pilot, one Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, turns and looks at him. They were introduced only hours ago in the _Enterprise_ hangar bay. He is likely the youngest person in the shuttle: one of the _Enterprise_ cadets who has received a battlefield promotion within the last few weeks. Sarek removes his headphones, waiting.

"Ambassador, I just wanted to let you know we'll be arriving soon."

_Soon_. An imprecision. He pauses, searching for the best way to ask for clarification, but Sulu beats him to it without prompting: "About twenty minutes from now."

Another imprecision, but much less so than the first. Sarek inclines his head in acknowledgement.

As the young man turns back to the flight console, there's a flash of metal on his right hand that catches the light. A simple gold band, Sarek realizes: he is married. The thought passes through his mind, unbidden: how must his spouse have reacted when the _Enterprise_ limped into spacedock after the carnage?

Then Sarek realizes, abruptly, that he has seen Lieutenant Sulu before: in the _Enterprise_ transporter room wearing a scorched exosuit, standing beside the transport console. That Sarek didn't realize it before when they were introduced is disturbing to say the least. Under normal circumstances such an observation would have never escaped his notice for this long.

Of course, his first glimpse of the pilot could hardly have been considered "normal circumstances".

It was no maintenance of control that kept him silent when he reemerged on the _Enterprise_ transport pad, but rather the silence that was all around him, throughout him, _inside_ him. The vacuum left behind by Spock's stricken cry, the shocked, dawning comprehension of the Starfleet officers across the room. The abrupt emptiness in his own mind, the realization that for the first time in decades, he was alone in his thoughts.

No, not entirely.

Spock's anger was suddenly a faint flare in the corner of his mind, more present than it had been in years. Spock was furious. And he was…

_Stunned_.

That is the word she would have used. There is no exact equivalent in Vulcan. The closest word means _to be confronted with unexpected circumstances_. Barely accurate, and insufficient.

Perhaps a better word would be _pakik_ : lost.

Whatever it was, it pursued him to the Medical Bay, to the temporary quarters arranged for him and the elders on Deck Eight, and all the way to the bridge, hours later, where he watched James Kirk hurl xenophobic insults at his son.

In the days—weeks—after it was over, Sarek would replay that scene over and over in his mind, trying to understand why he had not succumbed to his son's same rage, because his lack of action had hardly been the product of skillful restraint.

No Vulcan on Earth, even in the planet's most liberal hubs, could escape the pockets of anti-off-worlder abuse that cropped up in the most innocuous places. Sarek was hardly blind to the stares he had attracted walking at Amanda's side in San Francisco, to the protesters who gathered periodically outside the Vulcan embassy, holding hand-made signs with messages like, _Aliens Go Home_ and _No Borders, No Planet_. Standing there in front of the communications console, hearing his son's voice break with fury— _back away from me, Mr. Kirk—_ Sarek should have been incensed.

And yet there was something about Kirk's invectives— _what is it like not to feel anger? It must not even compute for you—_ that had seemed somehow insincere. Calculated. Intentional.

Perhaps even logical.

Spock, by contrast, was by that point too far gone to recognize what Sarek saw. His fury was like a bonfire, bright and blinding to the point of obscuring all else, filling the void in Sarek's mind, keeping him rooted to the spot. It was only when he realized that Spock had no intention of stopping—that he was going to stay there, hand pressed down on Kirk's windpipe until the other man stopped breathing—that Sarek found his voice again.

Slowly, his son's rage had faded to horror and shame, turned inward on himself.

_"Doctor, I am no longer fit for duty. I hereby relinquish my command based on the fact that I have been emotionally compromised. Please note the time and date in the ship's log."_

Sarek had not waited to determine what would happen next. He had followed Spock off the bridge and to the empty transport room, to offer words of comfort. Things that Amanda would have said. Things he knew to be true, but did not fully understand himself.

* * *

The next time Sarek saw James Kirk was three weeks after the _Enterprise_ returned to Earth, in the main library on the Starfleet Academy campus. By that point he had received detailed information on a class M planet potentially suitable to relocate the survivors of the attack. The planet did not yet have a formal name, but a research designation: BX331. It was several lightyears further from Earth than Vulcan had been, but had a remarkably similar climate and was uninhabited by intelligent or humanoid life.

All this from an elderly Vulcan named Selek, who was unable to meet Sarek in person. When Sarek inquired about his background, he learned Selek was also from Shi'Kahr, but had spent most of his life off-planet as a stellar cartographer. His answers to Sarek's questions, he now realizes, are what Amanda would have called "hedging." They left much to be clarified.

As did his reports on BX331. Though they were highly detailed, it was logical to substantiate the information contained in them based on other records. Shortly after receiving Selek's initial message, Sarek asked him to forward details of the organization he had worked with in surveying the planet. The organization turned out to be the Vulcan Science Academy, whose records were largely lost, the few that remained still being recovered from offworld servers.

In the weeks following, Selek proved strangely difficult to reach. It seemed to Sarek counterintuitive that any Vulcan—regardless of time spent offworld—should now avoid contact with other Vulcans, but Selek was so elusive that Sarek began to wonder if the man was avoiding him—in a manner not unlike Spock's avoidance of him during his first few years in Starfleet.

Then again, perhaps Sarek, like Amanda, merely wished to interact with someone who understood the nuances of his former home. He was perfectly capable of seeking out any existing records on BX331 himself; it was hardly logical to waste time trying to reach out to Selek for answers.

Had the Vulcan Science Academy still been standing, Sarek would have requested access to their spatial planetary surveys, in order to examine the details on the planet himself. That, of course, was no longer an option, and so Sarek found himself in the library on the Starfleet Academy campus—a location he rarely visited while on Earth, despite that the ambassadorship gave him borrowing privileges.

He was seated in the library at 0331 hours, long after the optimum hour to end the day and transition from work to rest, scanning survey records. Approaching footsteps drew his gaze, and he found himself looking at James Kirk, in civilian clothing, standing in front of his table.

Perhaps it was the late hour, but the young captain appeared hesitant, if not uncomfortable. A far cry from his bravado on the _Enterprise_ bridge.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," he said. "Do you have a moment?"

Sarek inclined his head, and Kirk sat opposite him.

"I was told you'd be here. That you're checking out a planet to potentially relocate the survivors of the attack."

"That is correct," Sarek confirmed.

"I was also told there's not a whole lot of information on it."

Sarek paused. The Academy library's data on BX331 was proving insufficient, but there seemed no suitable way to say this without coming across as insulting. "It is indeed relatively unknown," he answered. He waited for the captain to clarify his intentions. This was another human characteristic—building up to the crux of their conversations over time, rather than stating them outright. Patience was necessary.

"How unknown? Kirk asked.

"It would require a detailed survey of the planet to determine its suitability."

"Ok. I want to help."

And there it was. Like the geologist on the _Galileo_ , the young captain was clearly exercising a human need to acknowledge the difficulties of others. Sarek knew firsthand of the damage the _Enterprise_ had sustained in tracking down Nero and destroying the _Narada_ ; he also knew that the ship and its crew were unavailable to assist in relocation efforts while Starfleet reeled from the attacks. The significance of Kirk's statement was in the offer, not his real-world ability to effect change.

Another Amanda-ism: _It's the thought that counts_.

The thought did count—to Kirk, at least. But there was something else in the young man's eyes that made Sarek feel a need to point out the impossibility of his offer.

"I was given to understand the _Enterprise_ requires significant time in spacedock to complete repairs," he said.

Kirk shrugged. "Well, sure. We're stuck in port for now, but the _Enterprise_ shuttles are usable. You need a lift to get out there in the first place, right?"

Sarek paused. He hadn't considered the shuttles. As they were unlikely to have warp capability, a shuttle journey to BX331 would be significantly longer than making the trip in a starship. Then again, there was nothing untrue or inaccurate in Kirk's statement. He nodded briefly.

"Ok, well, I'm offering." The captain fell silent, waiting for a reply, and for once Sarek found himself unsure what to say.

"You are unaware how far from Earth BX331 is located," he said finally.

"I'm offering anyways."

Sarek stared at him. The young man had answered without missing a beat. A genuine offer, then. He would be a fool not to accept.

"Very well. …I thank you."

The captain shook his head. "Nothing to thank. When do you need to get out there?"

Sarek paused again for only a moment before answering: "As soon as possible."

"Ok. I'll start asking first thing, then."

True to his word, within a few days of their meeting, Kirk would arrange Sarek's transport to BX331. It would be a merely preliminary trip—Starfleet Command could only be cajoled to let Kirk borrow the _Galileo_ for a single Terran day. But the young captain would also manage to assemble the small team of scientists accompanying Sarek to BX331. Their presence, Sarek knows, will prove invaluable during their short visit to the planet.

Just before leaving Sarek's table in the library, Kirk's hesitance returned.

"Ambassador…before on the bridge, I…"

He trailed off, and Sarek recognized immediately what he was attempting to say. His actions were irrational, and yet they made sense. He was human.

"To dwell on past events which cannot be changed would be illogical," Sarek said, preempting the apology.

Less than absolution, more than acknowledgement.

Kirk merely stared at him for a moment, then nodded and left.

* * *

Aboard the shuttlecraft _Galileo_ , the episode of _Idle Chatter_ ends, and Sarek's statement— _to dwell on the past is illogical_ —echoes through his memory of the conversation. He knew the truth of it then, and he knows it now. And yet putting it into practice proves elusive.

The questions come to him unbidden, largely before sleep when his mind is unoccupied: an endless series of _what ifs_. What if he had chosen to take Amanda off-planet that week, as he had been contemplating but delaying for months? Their decision— _his_ decision—to go to the katric arc was logical given the information he had at the time of the attack, as it was one of the most secure locations on Vulcan, but what if he had instead piloted their flitter into orbit? As they fled the katric arc into the open air, what if he had stayed close to her and Spock, rather than trailing behind them? What if he had been close enough to reach out and catch her before she fell?

What if he had been standing in her place when the rock gave way?

When his mind is open to stray thoughts, he _lives_ in the past. And at all other times, he contemplates an uncertain future—one that may or may not tether his son to the relocation efforts, and more.

Barely a week had passed after the attack when the elders approached Sarek with their request that he ask Spock to leave Starfleet and put his skills to use helping to establish a Vulcan colony. And even as he listened to them, recognized the soundness of their logic, he had to focus to steady his breathing and quell the anger that rose in his chest at their flagrant hypocrisy.

_It is truly remarkable, Spock, that you have achieved so much despite your disadvantage._

Even then—now more than ten years ago—his anger was nothing compared to the shock and fury he felt from his son. He remembers the undercurrent of apprehension that arose in him like a wave as he tried to catch Spock's eye.

_Your achievements speak for themselves. You have been judged a worthy candidate for acceptance into the Vulcan Science Academy. Do not allow the bigotry of others to destroy what you have worked for._

Spock did not reply, though his eyes flicked briefly toward Sarek at the thought—before he hurled the elders' acceptance back at them. The entire time, his face was a perfect mask of stoicism. It was his voice that betrayed him.

_The only emotion I wish to convey is gratitude. Thank you, ministers, for your consideration. Live long and prosper._

In the years following they barely spoke. It became impossible to hold a conversation that wasn't charged with the subtext of Spock's decision. Even well after it became clear he would go far in Starfleet, Sarek found it impossible to contain his disappointment—which, illogically, Spock read as Sarek's disapproval of _him_. They consigned themselves to separate corners of the familial bond, only reachable by Amanda despite her protests, her one-sided wrath echoing her son's.

Within the last two years, however—shortly after Spock was tapped as the XO of the _Enterprise_ —one particular stray thought had begun to enter Sarek's mind, catching him off-guard.

Perhaps the VSA was never the right place for Spock.

And now: perhaps his own reasons for wanting to honor the elders' request—to convince his son to return to Vulcan society, or what remains of it—are not logical at all, but merely selfish.

Sarek does not have time to finish that thought, as Lieutenant Sulu turns around again to advise the passengers to put on their safety restraints: they are about to enter the planet's atmosphere.

During the approach, Sulu proves his skill as a pilot. The descent is as smooth as anyone with his training could make it. When Sarek steps out onto the planet's surface—at the coordinates provided to him by Selek—he feels the harsh heat of the star BX331 orbits on his face, a brief flutter in his chest as his cardiovascular system adjusts to the higher gravity. (Is it higher than that of Vulcan, or has his body merely grown accustomed to the lighter pressure on Earth? He will have to verify.)

The scientists and Lieutenant Sulu follow, fanning themselves and producing equipment and garments to protect themselves from the sun's ultraviolet rays: thin protective goggles with dark, polarized glass lenses, and a slippery, white cream which they will periodically work into their exposed skin over the course of their time on the planet.

The ground is dry and gravelly, their immediate surroundings the beginnings of foothills that lead into low, rocky mountains. The landscape is dotted by low scrub grass and succulents, the air full of the singing of insects which remain hidden from view.

Sarek selects the camera function on his PADD and captures an image of what he sees, the first of many which he will send to the Vulcan elders currently housed at the embassy in San Francisco, along with the findings of the scientists accompanying him. He studies the image after taking it, and pauses a moment, reflecting, before attaching it to a text-based subspace message. Over the next several minutes, he makes brief, preliminary observations, recording them in the body of the message, before reading them over and sending it.

If Spock does resign his commission in Starfleet to work on the relocation efforts, he will want to consider details of the prospective planets first.

They work for the next nine hours, the geologist and the agricultural experts taking soil samples and mapping the surrounding area, Lieutenant Sulu curiously examining the local plant life. (As it happens, his knowledge extends to botany as well.) When necessary, the scientists and Sulu take short breaks in the shuttle to eat and rehydrate, human bodies requiring more frequent maintenance than Vulcans'.

Sarek continues to document the immediate terrain in as much detail as he can, until the last possible moment. This comes an hour after nightfall when Lieutenant Sulu, leaning exhausted against the shuttle doors, calls him back, reminding him of their deadline to get the _Galileo_ back to spacedock within twenty-four hours.

During the return journey, one of the agricultural experts exchanges seats with Lieutenant Sulu, monitoring the auto-nav system while the pilot sleeps. The geologist, energized by their work that day, begins composing a report of her findings; the second agricultural expert makes a private subspace call to someone back on Earth.

Sarek listens to another episode of _Idle Chatter_ , skipping ahead to the most recent one. The commentators are more animated, back to their usual banter and snark. To his surprise, he finds this a relief. They have invited a guest speaker, a lawyer named Samuel T. Cogley, to discuss the upcoming midterm elections to the Federation Council.

Seventeen minutes into the episode, a subspace message notification chimes on Sarek's PADD, interrupting a lively debate between Cogley and one of the usual commentators. Sarek feels his eyebrow twitch upward as he notes the sender. The message contains a single line, with no salutation and no closer:

_The terrain bears a striking resemblance to that of Shi'Kahr_.

If nothing else, Spock has always shared his efficiency of communication. Sarek pauses the podcast and pulls up the message.

_Indeed_ , he types.

The reply is unnecessary. He sends it anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Idle Chatter" is modeled on a real-life podcast called The Slate Political Gabfest, which is just as informative and snarky.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. Live long and prosper.


End file.
